Six
by silvestial
Summary: A person who shouldn't remember in a world that shouldn't exist. Enter Roku, kidnapped by Root at a young age and trained to be the perfect shinobi. How will this change the future?


_Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto_

* * *

Death was not like he expected.

It was not, per say, The End.

It was more like.. the end. Not The End. But an end.

Death was not like snuffing out a flame but more like.. passing the torch.

It was just his luck that when the torch was passed, some of him went with it.

* * *

The sound of a child wailing was the first thing he heard. He was tensed up but numb, sort of hazy in a way, like he was only half conscious.

A woman, presumably the mother, made soft hushing noises but the wailing never abated.

The mother cooed softly and he felt himself begin to relax a little more. Surely if they meant him harm they would not put him near a child.

The wailing ceased and he felt his tingling lips close. He couldn't remember opening his mouth to begin with.

Had he been the one wailing? No, it didn't sound like him. His voice wasn't that... young.

The mother cooed again and he felt.. something warm and supple brush his hands. The fleshy thing was directed to his mouth were it peaked in an odd shape and... He bit down. Clearly he wasn't thinking right because you don't just _bite down_ on whatever the heck gets pushed near your mouth and his body wasn't listening because it kept trying to do something and shouldn't he have _teeth _and-

Something warm slides down his throat. He swallows instinctively because _hello_ choking hazard, and finds the liquid to be oddly tasteless.

It's thick, too thick to be water, but it's got an odd warmth to it like... like...

He gags, spitting up the substance everywhere. The wailing starts up again, followed by hiccuping cries, and he doesn't understand. His mind registers that he's the one wailing but he can't stop! It's like he's not in control of his own body.

The mother makes a soft hushing noise again and he quiets down a bit.

Wait.

He attempts to look at his surroundings but it's all blurry. The world is a kaleidoscope of colors, blurred into one big mess in front of his eyes. His nose tells him he's in the hospital, the scent of antiseptics and sterilizing medicine followed by blood and sweat sharp in his nose. He later wonders why he could smell all that but right now he's more worried about what's going on. The baby cries out again and why is this... what is...

Oh.

He's the baby.

The fleshy thing is directed to his mouth again and once more he finds himself latching on. The liquid trickles down his throat and he finds it much easier to mentally take the backseat and let his body do the work. He's got a lot to think about. It'll be better in the long run if he doesn't.. overwhelm his.. new.. body.

* * *

The mother- his mother, he guesses, burps him then passes him onto someone else.

The pure terror of being passed along heightens when a set of strong, muscled arms grabs him and holds him tight.

He goes completely limp, sagging in his bundled up form. He couldn't even struggle if he wanted to.

Not that he wants to, of course. He doesn't need the saying 'dropped on his head as a child' to be true.

The man, likely his father now that he thinks of it, makes a rumbling noise deep in his chest and he feels himself relax.

The rumbling almost seems like a purr, kinda like a really big, hopefully friendly jungle cat. The rumbling grows in volume and his small body is literally trembling with force of his father's purring, but he feels...calm. Relaxed. Happy as a calm, even. If calms could be happy, that is. He never really understood that saying anyways.

"こんにちは私の小さな太陽" His father rumbles just as he feels himself begin to slide off into sleep.

* * *

The world he's born into is not the same as his last one.

For starters, no one speaks English. Honestly it could've been some ancient dialect and all he would've known was yeah, it doesn't sound like French and it's probably not Spanish either. And that's it. Languages are not his forte. But in his situation of full immersion, it's either sink or swim. And he's more into sounding intelligent than getting labeled as a retard.

The other thing was magic. Or something. It was probably called something different but hey, if it sounds like a duck and walks like a duck...

He decides on reserving his opinion on such matters until he can learn more about it.

Currently the closest thing he's seen to said magic powers was his father moving unnaturally fast when he nearly rolled off the diaper changing station. And wasn't that an exciting day...

But regardless of it's oddities, he thinks he can get used to it here.

* * *

He takes it back. He takes it all back. This does not look good. At all.

"脇に出てください. 子供だけが必要."

The voice is scarily emotionless and somehow that makes it more threatening than coming in guns blazing.

"何? 私の朝日君に何をしたいですか?"

He recognizes that voice as Mother's. Her tone is anything but reassuring yet her voice alone calms him.

"脇に、あなたはけがをすることはありません."

The complete lack of infliction, almost mechanical words seem to emphasize the point.

"い-"

A whoosh and his mother's voice cuts off. He trembles, hiding as much as he can. Where is his father? Where is his defender?

Another whoosh, this time a lot closer, and suddenly someone is picking him up. "私は子供を見つけて回収しました. ベースに戻る."

He whimpers again, curling us as much as he can. It's not much and the iron tight grip of his captor allows little to no movement.

The air is cold, almost biting, as his handler jumps rather suicidally out the window. Imagine his surprise when the person barely touches the ground before jumping up again and ... oh.

The roar of the wind around him fades to a dull hum.

It's.. beautiful. The place he's in, the city of sorts he resides in, is beautiful.

It's nighttime and yet there's still people up and moving among the glow of paper lanterns and stars.

It's mesmerizing. Almost to the point that he can forget what's going on.

Almost the second after he thinks that, his handler hits the ground again, running instead of jumping, and then slides to a silent stop at the entrance to some house. His captor enters place and heads down a couple flights or so of stairs. He can't quite tell because it's gotten so dark and the only thing he can smell is the oddly sterile scent of his handler and the musky, dank smell of somewhere deep underground. After a while, the darkness almost seems to have a scent of it's own and suddenly his captor seems a lot more hospitable than whatever's lurking out there. He knows he's being silly- the dark isn't something to be afraid of- but if there's magic powers, than there could be monsters as well.

His handler finally stops going down and then silently ghosts forward, wispy blue lights slowly getting brighter as they approach another door. The door opens without a sound, almost more eerie than if it had made noise, and then they stop right in front of another man.

And even though he can't see well yet, he somehow gets the impression that this man is more of a monster than anything else hiding down here.

* * *

There are almost too many other children in the room where he is placed.

It's noisy, unsanitary, and all around awful.

He doesn't get much sleep the first two nights.

By the third night, his throat is raw from crying, his face is swollen and red, and he's got dark circles around his eyes that no baby should ever have.

He almost envies the sickly child to his right who could sleep through almost anything. He almost immediately feels bad after, though. At least he has moments of awareness. The child to his right always looks weak and dazed. They look pitiful and he hopes he never looks the same.

Although if this treatment continues on the same vein, he might end up like the sickly child after all.

* * *

After five whole nights of what amounted to cruel and unusual torture, the handlers finally came and got some of them.

At first, his blurry, sleep deprived eyes couldn't tell what was going on but then the shapes came and went and with them went the noise.

He passed out afterwords and slept uninterrupted for a full 18 hours. He wakes up, hungry and in need of a bath when glory hallelujah, one of the handlers picks him up, feeds him, bathes him, then practically pampers him with some rash cream and soft diapers.

When he gets back to his crib, it's in a different location and there's only five other children in the room. His crib is labeled with '六' and there are two other empty cribs beside it, each labeled with a different symbol. He isn't sure what they mean but he guesses he'll figure out later.

After that day, he never did see the sickly child again.

* * *

Each day is the same.

Wake up and stare at the ceiling. The day really begins when someone starts crying. Get a diaper change, eat, then get burped. Easy peasy. All eight of them get taken to a different room that's filled with building blocks, puzzles, and furniture. Weirdly enough, nothing is baby-proofed. He guesses his kidnappers might not be quite so baby savvy as his actual parents. He usually completes the puzzles with ease over and over again or gets one of the more careful children to play with his hair. It's oddly soothing as long as they don't yank on it. Then it's another diaper change, food, burping, couple hours of nap time, then being passed along to a different room.

The other room is very odd. He's usually the only one in it except for one of his handlers. His handler then starts talking. Slowly at first and only saying the same word over and over again. They usually have a pack of cards with pictures on one side and symbols on the other. He finally understood what they were trying to do after a couple days of him just staring at the dog picture and the monotone voice telling him "Inu."

He generally attempted to babble the word back but his tongue was weirdly heavy in his mouth and 'inu' sounded more like 'eeeevvuu' followed by a lot of spit. But he likes to think he's getting better.

He's almost got his name as well. It's been mentioned a few times during his learning sessions and it's fairly easy as far as names go. 'Roh-Ku' or '六' in kanji form. So far, Roku is fairly optimistic he's going to be able to say his name by the end of the year.

If he can't focus, a small wrist band buzzes him until he's focused on the instructor. It's uncomfortable as hell but at least it doesn't hurt. And if he, an adult in a kid's body, is having trouble focusing, he can only imagine what the other children are going through.

After an hour or two, Roku is brought back to his crib and is allowed to nap for about an hour and a half. For a while the children cried at the short nap time until they got used to it. Roku in particular understood it. It helped exhaust the children so when it came time to sleep, most of the children slept through the night. After nap time the children were put into the same place room with the puzzles and furniture and the buzzing on their wrists helped keep everyone awake. After.. playing... for a while, everyone got a bath, changed, fed, then burped and put back in our cribs. And that was it. The day was over and it repeated like this again tomorrow. And the day after, and the day after that.

* * *

It took at least a year before everything changed. Birthdays were not celebrated, but they were acknowledged. It was just another day when everything changed. He'd been woken up like every other day and brought to the first room. Since everyone could walk, the room was now somewhat dangerous in the way the crashing into furniture was in no way good. He'd argued about the correct way to stack the blocks with Ni and ended up sulking in the corner when Ichi inevitably got mad at them and broke the tower regardless of who built it. He'd laid down and let Hachi run her hands though his hair for the rest of the time, just like normal. They'd eaten lunch- some nasty grey concoction that was supposedly super healthy- then went to their separate rooms and that's were it all changed.

"Sit."

Roku obeyed without question. Two months ago the buzzer bracelets had been replaced with shock bracelets. After a few incidents, he wasn't eager to test them again.

"I am now going to teach you Chakra. Pay attention; I will not repeat it again."

He straightened in his seiza position. It used to be uncomfortable, bordering on painful, but he got through it. Now it was just a minor irritant that he could easily block out.

"Take my hand."

He grabbed it, marveling the difference in textures and size.

"Watch and feel."

An odd tingling feeling gathered in his hand, not dissimilar to pins and needles. A blue glow lit up his handler's hand and he watched with awe as the pins and needles sensation increased. His handler dropped his hand and Roku gasped as the sensation disappeared instantly.

"Think of the feeling. Isolate it in your mind. Draw a part of it out to your hand. Doing it correctly will cause it to glow."

Both he and his handler shifted positions, going from seiza to cross legged. It was how he learned to mediate.

Pins and needles. That was the feeling he was looking for. But all he felt was his heart, thundering in the background.

Pins and needles. It was that simple. Roku let out a long, slow breath, taking in and letting out the air. His heart thudded in the background monotonously. He was honestly close to falling asleep by this point. His mind drifted, picking out shapes in the shadows behind his eyelids and there- right in the center was a ball. He mentally blinked, focusing on the ball. It was small and a soft gold color and it spiked every time he mentally moved, kinda like the videos he used to watch of ferrofluid reacting to magnets where he was the magnet and his chakra was the ferrofluid.

He reached out an touched it, curious despite himself, and the texture was kinda like a thick gel. The outer part was like a thick liquid while the further he stuck his hand in, the thicker it got. He guessed that the center was his core. And it likely wouldn't be good if he reached that far. But he, armed with the excuse of being a curious little kid who didn't know better, reached as far in as he could until is fingers brushed something warm and ... he was no longer sitting in the room.

Roku opened his eyes slowly and found himself pulling his head out of.. what looked like a basin, actually. It shared remarkable resemblance to the Dumbledore's pensive too. The basin was filled with a silvery fluid, almost like liquid mercury, and to add credit to the pensive idea, there were a number corked bottles lining the shelves on either side of the basin.

He noticed, absentmindedly, that most of the corked bottles were empty.

Taking a look around, Roku finds himself in an empty room filled with all manner of odd things. In front of him is a red sneaker sat on a pedestal, shoe strings dangling carelessly. He notes the mud stains splattered on the sides. To the left is a stuffed cat. A lion, he thinks. It's fur is tattered and the face is missing a few whiskers. He gazes at it quizzically before moving on. To his right is a small table, a girlish pink table cloth covering it. On it rest two teacups and a kettle in between them. The closest teacup is half full while the other is nearly empty. An extra chair is resting at the table but there isn't a teacup in front of it. To the right of the tea party is a blue bike, old metal scratched and somewhat warped. A tattered swing hangs from the ceiling next to it and he accidentally brushes it with his hand as he walks by.

A little girl laughs and he hears her say "Faster!" as the sound of giggles fades away and he pulls back his hand instantly. English. She said it in English. He doesn't remember this from his past life.

But there's a lot of things he's forgetting. He knows the little girl but at the same time he doesn't. Who was she? His sister? A friend? He can't remember. And that, that is sad.

* * *

He spends a few more seconds in there before pulling out. He figured going back the way he came should work so Roku had shoved his back into the silvery liquid and with a pop, he's back in the waking world.

The chakra comes easily to his hand. Well, easier than he expected. It flowed to his hand after a couple seconds of trying to direct the warm energy down there. He might've added a bit much- it's bright glow was a little too bright- but he still did it.

The feeling of surprise he got from his masked handler was gratifying.

"Danzo-sama will be pleased."


End file.
